The Boy who Belonged to Wildflowers
Chapter 1
The night sky had barely put on a blue hue. The dawn goddess had just awoken.
A little boy sat near a murky puddle. He was watching the swirling sand dwindle to the bottom. As soon as the particles settled, he put his hand in the puddle and twisted his wrists. The sand storm began anew.
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I am not sure why he did that; his hands were covered with mud and his clothes reeked of filth. But he didn’t care, so compelled he was by his sand storm, that the tangibilities around him faded like salt in water. The whirlpool was his whole world, his home. And that’s the thing about home, isn’t it? No matter how hard it hurts you, fails you, and ruins you— you stay. Why would you abandon your home? How could you abandon home?
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I have had a long life, too many things have led me astray. Too many things that I held close to my heart. Whenever I see a naive love, I scoff at it. I hold myself worthy of judgment as though I have never been victim of foolish loves. The most of which, came from my home.
This little boy reminded me of someone I used to be. Riddled with questions and seeking refuge in chaos. We were ironies, floating on the surface of reality and drowning in worlds that will never be ours. The thing about people of ironies, is that we don’t get there by living in comfort. For some reason, better or for worse, it takes a voyage, an Odyssey of sorts (perhaps Homer was himself an irony, but I haven’t lived that long). I knew the boy did not have an easy life. He looked barely eight and yet he felt a hundred. He has lived for so long and been alive for so less. I knew the feeling, and I know how it looks like. There was a story there, and I was eager to listen.
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Aashu had come from a distant village, he had lost his family and was put in an orphanage in my village, Amithuru. He roamed the streets alone and I would always find him rooting for Krishna’s rooster in the tri-village cockfights. Krishna, although a good decade older than him, shared a brotherly bond with Aashu. “Tommy Singh,” they called their rooster. After Tommy Singh died, they named another rooster Jerry Singh. I wonder what they’ll name the next one.
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All things said and done; Aashu was now a part of Amithuru. Be it rooster fights or early morning promenades, Aashu had wandered into our lives, and although some of us are too proud to admit it, perhaps our hearts too.
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He would go around, curious and enthusiastic. Asking a million questions to us old folk. We would happily answer of course, these days, there are hardly a few who want to talk to us. In the early days of our acquaintance, I had babbled extensively in an attempt to seem wise and erudite. But these days I notice, Aashu always asks, never answers. We tried asking him how his life was before he came here, but he always deflected, he would say “I don’t remember.” But he does, he does remember. He just doesn’t want to remember.
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I am an old man, I don’t have much time, neither do I have anything left in life to occupy me. Perhaps my interest in Aashu’s life was less of concern and more of curiosity, an escape from fatal boredom. Maybe he was looking for a friend?
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I approached Aashu and his puddle-home, “Aashu babu, shouldn’t you play with something a little less dirty? Vehicles use this road; God knows what filth lies in the water. Besides, there’s already dirt on your shirt, you are going to end up in trouble with Vydehi. ”
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Aashu, who hadn’t paid any attention to what I was saying, snapped into reality at the very mention of Vydehi. “I totally forgot about that! Ammamma is going to kill me!” Ammamma– the Telugu word for maternal grandmother, that’s what he called Vydehi. Vydehi was my classmate growing up, we attended the same government elementary and high school. Back when people were openly patriarchal (they still are), Vydehi outshone every student in our school. She was the best in academics and classical singing, and even those things couldn’t convince her parents to let her study further. She was married off to a thirty-year old man when she was fifteen. It was not a good marriage, people in the village often spoke about how her husband would beat her every night after getting drunk. Thankfully, he died ten years later. Although, I’m not sure how grateful I should be given that she had to endure that vile man’s whims for ten years. I always respected Vydehi, but when she enrolled herself in the Women’s College for a Bachelor’s in Mathematics the day after her husband’s death, I had nothing but immense admiration for her. She opened the orphanage on her fortieth birthday.
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“Thatha, will you tell her that I was walking with you and a vehicle went across the puddle, flinging the mud at me?” I sympathized with the boy; in high school, my friends and I would briefly bunk classes to go out for a smoke, when we got back, who would be standing there waiting for us if not Vydehi and the teacher that witch summoned. Where and when we went out for a smoke was our business, just because I admire her doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge she was a snitch. I had to protect this boy.
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“Of course, of course, I’ll be your alibi, don’t worry. Come, I’ll walk with you.” Aashu breathed out in relief and began walking with me to the orphanage. “She’s very strict about clean clothes and our diet, never lets me eat more than one Jalebi.”
“That sounds like her, she hasn’t changed much.” Aashu nodded as though he knew how she was before. “Aashu babu, what were you thinking when you were playing with that water?”
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“It was the same color.” I didn’t understand, what was the same color? “The water had the same color as the day I lost my family.” He continued walking without looking at me. “I don’t remember much, I remember there being a lot of rain one day, the water seeped into our hut, I wasn’t tall enough to stand in the water, so my mother held me. Soon, the water became too tall for her. But then she saw a boat, that boat didn’t have enough place for the both of us, so she left me in it. I cried and cried, I didn’t want her to leave, but she told me she’d find me, that another boat will come, that she’ll get on it. Another boat did come, but it was too late. She didn’t come find me. I saw her again, but she wasn’t breathing.”
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Summer’s evening breeze filled the silence between us. I didn’t know what I could say to Aashu. “What about your father?” He just shrugged, “I saw him only a few times, I don’t remember him.”
“When did this happen?” “I was five. They waited for my father, but when he didn’t come, they put me in an orphanage close to my village. But it wasn’t as good as Ammamma’s. They had to close it for some reason and we were all sent to different places. That’s when I came here, just in time for first class.” He was six years old when he came to Amithuru, and unlike most kids his age, he was more than eager to go to school for the first-grade. He liked the Social Sciences class the best, a month ago, all that boy could do was tell us the capitals of Indian States. “Do you miss your mother?” What kind of a stupid question was that? I cussed at myself for being overly-intrusive. “I don’t know. But I think I miss having one.” Fuck, what should I say to that? “It’ll get better Aashu.” Sometimes I think I should just shut up.
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By some god’s grace, we had arrived at the orphanage before I could face Aashu’s reaction of my utter failure to hold a proper conversation. Vydehi descended from the stairs, Queen of her Kingdom, waiting for the Prince. “Aashu, what happened to your clothes?”
Aashu almost panicking, looked at me. I stepped up, “We were walking back here when some rascal on his bike went past us, there was a puddle near by and, you know na what will happen, connect the dots.” “No, I don’t know, connect the dots for me.” Witch. “The water from the puddle fell on him, it was not his fault.” She narrowed her brown eyes. “Is that all? You better not be teaching Aashu how to smoke Venkat.” “Vydehi it was one time! Stop bringing it up.” “One time? Hah! It was one time that I had called the teacher after putting up with you and your useless gang for months. There was an exam that day you idiot.” “Vydehi please, what will the boy think of me?” “He’ll think exactly what we always thought, that you never got married because you wanted to continue living that reckless life with no one to question you.” Lies, such blatant lies. “Okay first of all, despite being reckless as you put it, I never depended on anyone, sure I might have vices but dependence is not one of them. Secondly, I never got married because I never loved anyone.” Vydehi scoffed. “Ni mohaniki prema okati.”
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How dare she!? To say that love is too much to ask for someone like me? ME. The dashing bank clerk who had a salary of hundred rupees per month. Does she even know how much of a stud I was before my wrinkles? Hell, I’m still a stud. I was about to say something back when I noticed Aashu laughing. My annoyance faded away, replaced with a certain kind of joy I hadn’t felt it years. In that moment I realized, that I had never seen Aashu laughing. He looked like a kid then. All the things that made me feel as though he was a hundred years old were no longer on his face.
He was a kid. Finally, he was a kid.
Chapter 2
The monsoons in Andhra are magnificent giants. Thunderous and enormous, graceful in their creation and destruction alike. Every time it rains, I am taken to a place of infinite memories, all coalescing into a single moment of everything and nothing. Paper boats floating in familiar murky waters, pushing Ali into a puddle (he deserved it on the account of being my friend), racing into the gush of rainwater at the end of school, the taste of rain, the sound of rain, the sight of rain, and on that breathtaking June evening, the sight of her.
I pulled out a black umbrella from the almara, the wood had hints of turmeric from the days my mother worshipped the cupboard, or worshipped the ‘God’ in the cupboard.
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I was never one for religion. That would be a lie. I was never religious. As a child I would want ‘gods’ as friends, a cure for eternal peculiarity that would place me in a perpetual position of loneliness. I craved it, craved companionship, I just hadn’t developed the charisma required for it yet. I would be open to being friends with any god really, and because of a library I had encountered on my only visit to Hyderabad, I had been given access to Egyptian and Greek gods. It was raining that afternoon, and everyone had descended into chaos. My father had left me near this Central Library while he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes to smoke for a while and stay long enough that my mother wouldn’t catch the smell; a whiff and he’d be done for. I was ten, and I was a boy, and he was a man, who thought his boy was also a man. He told me he would be back in a few hours as he had ‘official’ business to take care of.
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For a man, my father lied a lot.
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My mother had taught me English since I was four. While my father chastised her for teaching me the “British Language,” she was adamant to teach me the “Language of the world.” What is my opinion on the English language now? If the English can loot the word loot, then what better way to enrage the ghost of Warren Hastings than write Indian treachery in English.
I had wandered around the library and chosen a book titled, World Mythology. Greek Mythology was the first section, and I had read it, entirely (pronunciation was given), savored every word, and met new friends. When I came back to Amithuru, I was eager to tell everyone I knew about my new companions, “Amma, I learned about new gods, Egyptian, Greek- Anubis and Zeus.”
“Who?”
“Anubis and Zeus.”
“Who’s that last one?”
“Zeus.”
“Juice?”
“Vadhile.” Let it go.
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I never heard the end of it. Whenever I would speak of my divine friends, she would make fun of me. “Ask him about his friends, apple juice, orange juice.” “AMMA, ZEUS NOT JUICE.” “Adhele.”
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I miss my mother. Though she loved me with all her heart, it had grown slightly bitter at my wifeless existence. No children and no woman, to ever love.
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There comes a time, when you feel new things, or things that feel new, but always lived underneath the blanket of secrets you held close. When the night came, and all went quiet, my mind went to her. Chasing her through her mystery, grasping the strings that would elude me, breathing the distance between the both of us. My nocturnal mind embraced every desire, every curious exhaustion, every memory of her fleeting presence. It was only my days that belonged to me, my nights, were hers.
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And it had all began that June evening.
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The tenth grade examinations had finished, and while Chandu, Ali and I were reveling in the relief of finally being rid of examinations, we also waited in trepidation of every piece of humiliation we would receive once results were out. We had done well enough, but when is well enough ever good enough?
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We decided to treat ourselves with ice golas, instead of cigarettes, because though we were assholes, we respected the sanctity of the last day of examinations. With my cherry-stained lips and my hair that looked like a chicken walked through it, I saw her.
I had seen her many times before, but that day, I saw her.
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Jasmines tucked into her hair, the rouge of dusk reflected in her eyes, her endlessly black eyes. Her laugh, I remember it, as though she laughed for me. The air had drenched itself with the scent of damp soil, the sign of a rain forthcoming. The winds had made broken hinges rasp on wooden doors, and everyone knew a storm was coming. And it did, but that evening, my storm was one that was born in the trenches of my heart. My storm had everything to do with everything I did not know about her.
And even that storm, was not love. It wasn’t, right?